At first glance, it may sound like the plot of Person of Interest, the CBS show about a genius billionaire who develops a software program that taps into all public surveillance systems and predicts when crimes are most likely to occur. But as Technology Review reports, researchers at Microsoft (MSFT) and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are working on disaster-predicting software that is very real and also much less invasive than its fictional counterpart. Instead of using surveillance cameras to predict future events, the software analyzes news headlines in different regions to see if it can spot warning signs for outbreaks of diseases or civil unrest that could result in violence.